Co-star Disses Estella Warren

Anthony Anderson, the oversized comic relief in Steven Seagal's February comeback flick Exit Wounds, pops up in this weekend's Two Can Play That Game as a man with plenty of advice about love.

But Anderson has no love — and mostly unkind words — for Estella Warren. Anderson just finished five months' location filming in Australia for Down and Under, a mob comedy in which he stars with Jerry O'Connell. Warren is featured as a local game warden, and Anderson won't be waiting for any hugs and kisses.

"Estella can't act," Anderson declares of the synchronized swim star-turned-athlete whose red-hot film career to date has produced less-than-critically-praised turns in Driven and Planet of the Apes. "She can't act her way out of a paper bag and I'll say that!"

A Jerry Bruckheimer production due in theaters next spring, Down and Under also features Christopher Walken as a mob boss. "Jerry's the hairdresser and I'm Louis, his childhood friend who saved him from drowning on a beach when he was 10 — and I don't let him forget that," Anderson explains. "I do these schemes and [in one of them] we're delivering TV sets that happen to be stolen and we're also in a stolen van and we go to warehouse owned by [Walken's character], who is also Jerry's stepfather."

O'Connell and Anderson get tangled in a zanily complicated string of events involving missing mob money, a nearly dead kangaroo, and Anderson's character's jacket. How does game warden Warren figure into all of this?

Anderson's answer: "She is the eye candy in the movie."

The rising comedic star, who broke out with a supporting role as one of Jim Carrey's three sons in last summer's Me, Myself & Irene does have kind words for people he considers truly talented — like standup comic
Mo'Nique, who he helped get cast in Two Can Play That Game as one of star Vivica Fox's girlfriends.

"They didn't consider Mo'Nique for this, they were looking at Tyra Banks or somebody. I was, 'You know who would be perfect for this?' and they didn't know who she is. I tell them, 'She has her own television show, The Parkers on UPN, she owned the Comedy Club in Baltimore, she headlines the Queens of Comedy,' and three days later Mo'Nique calls me, 'Thanks for hooking me up.' I said, 'I was just telling the truth.'"